


But These Are All Lies

by Lillian_Shepherd



Series: Falling [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, Movie Spoilers, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2012-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-19 18:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/576531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lillian_Shepherd/pseuds/Lillian_Shepherd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"SHIELD sometimes lies by omission, and sometimes just lies."</p><p>But lying to Captain America, even if you think it is necessary for his own good, will have consequences.</p><p>And if you think Tony Stark is above exploiting the opportunity, you are seriously misjudging him, particularly when he needs distraction from his own troubles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But These Are All Lies

**Author's Note:**

> Canon compliant until the end of _The Avengers_ movie (and one deleted scene) but violently AU from what we know of current Marvel projects.
> 
> A direct sequel to _Falling into the Void Together_ which you should probably read first, or the beginning isn't going to make sense.
> 
> Beta'd by Inamac.
> 
> I am British, and there are British spellings throughout. However, this has not been picked over by an American, so if you find anything out of place or the wrong words in someone's mouth, I'd appreciate you letting me know.

Tony woke to the sound of soft voices, so his first thought was, _Pepper_ ... but both voices were masculine, and Pepper...

Pepper wasn't in bed with him. Had gone. Left the company. Left him...

That pain was worse than the all-too-familiar headache and dustpan mouth, informing him in no uncertain terms that drowning his sorrows was not an effective remedy against loss.

"I wonder if you and Tony will be able to help me check something out," one of the voices said. It was a vaguely familiar voice, but the pounding in his head was not helping him identify it.

The reply, though, was from an immediately recognisable source. "So long as it does not breech any of the restrictions within my programming and protocols – the instructions I operate by – I am at your service, Captain," Jarvis said.

Captain? Wait, wait, that had been Captain America's voice?

Tony hurriedly opened his eyes and lifted his head and, yes, Steve Rogers, unremarkable in chinos and a plain blue button-down shirt, was leaning back in an armchair that Tony didn't actually recognise, fair head tilted to look upwards in, presumably, the direction of the hidden speaker from which Jarvis's voice was emerging.

As if he'd heard Tony's movement – and, hey, super-soldier senses so he probably had – Steve glanced towards him, then came swiftly to his feet.

And just when had he started thinking of Cap as 'Steve'?

_... Just Steve. Who is worried about his friend Tony ..._

And it all came back, not so much in a flood as in waves battering through the lingering alcoholic haze.

"Hey, Tony," Steve said softly, smiling at him in what looked very like relief.

"Coffee," Tony pleaded, trying for pathos because it appeared to have worked last night.

It didn't work now. "Water and painkillers first," Steve said firmly, handing Tony a glass filled with clear liquid that unfortunately was not gin or vodka, and two capsules. Now he was faced with it, he also vaguely remembered being coaxed to drink a disconcerting amount of water at some ungodly hour.

"You've been talking to Jarvis," Tony accused, keeping his own voice to a whisper in respect for what appeared to be Thor's hammer trapped in his head and trying to get out.

Oddly, Steve avoided his eyes, saying merely, "Water, meds, then coffee if you can keep the water down."

"Yes, sir, Captain, sir," Tony snarked, but there was no force behind it. It sounded like banter with a friend. Which is what it felt like.

His hand shook as he reached to take the glass, and Steve did not let go until he had it clasped tightly in both hands. 

The water was cold with a hint of lemon juice and it scoured his mouth clean, but his stomach rumbled mightily in protest, and he flopped back against the pillows, swallowing convulsively in an attempt to avoid throwing up all over the covers.

It brought back another unwanted memory from the night before, of Steve half carrying him into the bathroom, and of him emptying his stomach into the john. He didn't remember coming back to bed.

He'd been fucking pathetic last night. And he was lucky to be waking up at all. Those were things he could not say to Steve. He _hated_ appearing weak, and in front of Captain America of all people... He couldn't say 'thank you' or 'sorry' – he just couldn't – but he was too frightened by the thought of being left alone again to snarl at him.

He compromised. "You don't have to do this."

This time Steve met his eyes as he smiled, open and honest. "I know. But it's not the first time and, to be frank, if alcohol affected me at all I would probably have needed someone to do the same for me."

Oh, yeah. Now he remembered. 

_... what it's like to be totally alone ..._

Oh, _Pepper_.

He crushed panic. Life without Pepper was not something he was ready to tackle just yet – maybe never.

"You had to put the Howling Commandos to bed?" he asked, instead.

Steve grinned. It totally transformed his face. Tony almost wanted to hide from what the brilliance was doing to his hangover. "Not exactly. But I had to make sure they were ready to fight the next day."

"I could fly the suit right now," Tony protested, because he knew Steve wouldn't let him attempt it.

"Sure you could ... but I've seen film of the last time you crawled into it when drunk."

Christ. No wonder Steve had had such a low opinion of him. "It was my _birthday party_ ," he protested. And I was dying.

"You were _dying_?" Steve sounded horrified.

"Did I say that aloud? Yeah. The ARC reactor – this thing in my chest that keeps me alive – was poisoning me. It's fine now. But things sucked for a while."

"SHIELD didn't tell me that."

Tony sighed and closed his eyes. That was better. He'd have to ask Steve to find his sunglasses. "SHIELD sometimes lies by omission, and sometimes just lies."

"Yeah, I got that," Steve said ruefully.

That was good. They'd talk about that later. Now he'd just wait for the meds to take effect, then ask Steve to get him that promised coffee...

 

When he woke again, he was alone, in what he now realised was one of the guest suites he had assigned over to the Avengers while he remodelled the floors below.

"Where's Steve?" he asked, hearing the querulousness in his voice and cursing himself.

"In the penthouse kitchen having lunch with Dr Banner. He asked me to call him if you woke up while he was gone so he could bring you your coffee."

"No. Tell him I'll be there in a few minutes. And he'd better have that coffee ready and waiting!" Damn it, he'd been tortured by terrorists and survived to build the miniature ARC reactor and the first of the Iron Man suits. He'd survived Obie's treachery. And Vanko – though Hammer's involvement had given him better odds there. He could survive anything.

But he'd had Pepper and Rhodey, then, and Coulson and Happy and Natasha to help.

Okay. Maybe he could still have Rhodey if he appeased the military and maybe even Natasha...

He'd saved the helicarrier, figured out Loki's plan, out-bluffed and out-manoeuvred that god and the goddam World Security Council. He'd had help there, too, from the other Avengers, and they'd defeated Loki and the Chitauri. 

He would not call Rhodey. He could handle this. He _could._ And he still had the Avengers, or rather, he had Steve and Bruce here right now.

He could handle this.

But he hadn't really had much involvement in running Stark Industries since, oh, hell, since he had actually inherited the company. There had been his father, then Obie, and he had let Pepper do most of what little was required of him, signed on the dotted line.

It was too much to think about. He needed coffee to boot his brain. Then, he was sure, it would all be simple once again.

 

It took him less than fifteen minutes to make his way to the kitchen via his own bedroom where he had showered and changed and perched his signature sunglasses on his nose.

He found Steve and Bruce seated at the breakfast bar, amid the remains of what looked like an extensive meal. They moved together to clear him a space as he hitched himself onto a seat and allowed Bruce to place a mug of coffee in front of him.

"What can I get you?" Steve asked. "Bruce and I have been having a late breakfast, and there's pancake mixture left, and plenty of bacon and eggs. Bruce tells me he makes a great omelette."

"Not an omelette," Tony said, with a shudder. Too many memories. The coffee was terrific, just as he liked it. Someone had been talking to Jarvis. "Pancakes sound good," he added randomly, because he wasn't sure he could actually eat anything.

"There's lots of fruit," Bruce said. "I could make you a smoothie. Better for your stomach than..." He waved a hand at the coffee, and Tony curled his arms protectively around it, making Steve chuckle on his way to the stove and Bruce give him a disapproving look as he began scrabbling for cutlery and plates.

"Okay, okay," Tony muttered, trying to work out why he felt such unexpected pleasure at having these two men in his kitchen. "Bullies. How did the experiment go, by the way, Bruce?"

Bruce flinched, looking everywhere but at Tony. "Not well. I don't think the Other Guy wants me to get rid of him. There's damage..."

Tony shrugged. "The building's still here. Even the Hulk does less damage than the Chitauri."

"Don't bet on that," Bruce said dryly, taking bananas from a bowl on the workbench and a mango from the crisper.

 

The coffee helped, and both smoothie and pancakes were excellent, though his stomach made his comments for him. He was lucky his companions were too polite to say anything.

Jarvis, however, had no compunctions at all – and he really must think about building some into his protocols – about interrupting him.

"Sir, Mrs Arbogast has just called to remind you that the Board meeting is at 14:30, and should she add Ms Potts's resignation to the agenda?"

Tony groaned. Pepper had picked his replacement PA, and he had been sure she had done so because the comfortable, middle-aged woman was no threat to her position. He had been proven wrong. Mrs Arbogast organised him with the same efficiency as her predecessor and was even better at keeping time-wasters away from him. People underestimated Pepper because she was beautiful, Mrs Arbogast because she looked like a pleasant middle-aged matron. Tony never liked crossing either.

At least he was never going to go through a break-up with Mrs Arbogast.

"Pepper resigned from the company as well?" Bruce exclaimed. "You didn't tell me that, Steve."

Tony didn't want to think about all Pepper had left. In fact, he wanted to think about anything rather than that. "Steve," he said. "When I woke up earlier I heard you asking for some help from Jarvis and me. I guess we both owe you – so ask away."

"No, you don't owe me. Friends 'owe' each other nothing."

"Then just ask," Tony said. "You're intriguing me. Com'on, Steve, give."

Steve was still hesitating; rubbing the back of his neck in what was plainly an habitual nervous gesture. "I need to check whether an address in England exists and, if it does, the name of the person who lives there – and whether the telephone number I have for them is correct."

"I can do that," Jarvis said.

"Sure he can, but why haven't you asked SHIELD?" The answer was already clear to Tony before he'd finished the question. "Or is the info from SHIELD?"

Steve nodded.

"And you don't think it's kosher. Well, I'd have doubts if Fury told me my own name, so I'm with you all the way on that. Apart from a general disinclination to trust Mr Number One Spy, why do you think there's something fishy about this data? Not that mistrusting Fury isn't reason enough."

"I may be completely wrong. So much has changed over the last seventy years – but I was in England a while during the war, and the address is like nothing I ever heard or saw there."

Tony made a two-gun gesture at him; "Give. Now."

"52-J Merryweather, Winchester, UK."

"Sure it was the UK? It doesn't sound right to me either—"

"It isn't," Jarvis interrupted. "There is no street, building, suburb or village called Merryweather in or around Winchester, or, indeed, in the whole of England. 52-J is not a form of numbering used anywhere in the UK. In fact, I have failed to find anything even approaching that formulation. If it is meant to be an apartment, it would be Flat J comma 52—"

"Enough, Jarvis!" Tony interrupted. "We get the message."

"Furthermore," Jarvis continued, huffily, "there is no county stated – it should be Hampshire – or its abbreviation 'HANTS' and, even worse, no postal code – the equivalent of a ZIP code."

"ZIP code?" That was Steve.

"Numbers that indicate postal location," Bruce explained.

"Like 'London SW1'?" Steve said, surprising everyone.

"Developed from that," Jarvis said. "Which is why in the UK they consist of letters and numbers while in the US they are just numbers. They are also used by route finders and electronic mapping. Those for Winchester start with SO, for Southampton, the nearest large city."

 _"Thank_ you, Jarvis," Tony said sarcastically.

"Thank you, Jarvis," Steve said, plainly meaning it.

"Someone was either very careless or thought you were very stupid," Tony observed.

And got that wide smile that was so unlike the plastered-on grin of the propaganda films. "Just a Brooklyn kid from the '40s."

"Who was being tempted by what?"

"I nearly called this number," Steve said, then recited it for Jarvis's benefit. "SHIELD gave me records that showed all the people I'd ever known were dead, except Peggy. Peggy Carter. That was supposed to be her address and telephone number."

Bruce was looking puzzled. "Peggy Carter is...?"

"SSR bigwig, but that was after Steve took his icy dip, of course. Previous to that, his ... girlfriend? Sweetheart?" Tony wriggled his eyebrows questioningly at Steve, hoping to make him laugh.

It didn't work. "I'd hoped she might be," Steve said, blushing painfully. "After the war, y'know. But that was seventy years ago." His voice, which had started out tentative, was becoming more resolute by the word. "I know I can't go back, that she probably doesn't want to be reminded, even if she remembers me." For the first time, his eyes met Tony's, and he seemed to find some reassurance there. "But I was tempted just to hear her voice."

"And I'm sure you would have. Or a close approximation." This was good. This was a great distraction. "Jarvis, check out that number for me."

"Indeed, sir. If you had dialled this number from New York, Captain, you certainly would not have reached any number in the UK without adding 011 44 and subtracting the first zero. Furthermore that is not a Winchester number, but a London one. Or it would be if it were not a digit too long. I cannot find it listed in any telecom company records, either here or in the UK. I suspect it transfers to a cell somewhere in the United States."

"SHIELD," Bruce said.

"Probably." Steve was pale and tight-lipped, plainly controlling himself carefully. "Thanks, Tony. That's all I needed to know."

"No, what you need to know is who's going to answer that cell," Tony said firmly, because it was a puzzle and he wasn't letting go of it yet. "Jarvis, is Fury using his cell?"

"You've hacked ... Fury's cell phone?" Bruce was plainly torn between delight and horror.

"Naturally." Tony couldn't help his smirk, he really couldn't. "Jarvis?"

"Not currently, sir."

"And do we have a voice synth for Fury? Do you have enough data?" 

"Indeed I do, sir."

"Okay. I'll do the talking, you make me sound like the one-eyed monster-cyclops thing."

"Does the FCC know you have that kind of tech?" Bruce wanted to know. "For that matter, does Fury?"

"No and no. You really think I'm gonna pass this to the Feds or SHIELD any time soon? Uhuh. The secret of this dies with me an' Jarvis. Okay, buddy, hijack that cell and prepare to call the number Captain Rogers gave you. Steve, not a word. You'll get your chance if Margaret Carter really is on the end of this."

Steve, who was looking stunned, nodded.

"And if Director Fury tries to use his cell while I'm controlling it, sir?" Jarvis's voice was at its most pained.

"Then lose the signal, chop chop. Okay, J, open hailing frequencies."

"Hailing frequencies open, sir," the AI said, with more ennui than Nichelle Nichols could possibly have managed even in one of her most bored moment.

Bruce, who had his head in his hands, groaned. Of course, it by-passed Steve completely. Tony was going to have to educate him in the important things about the twenty-first century real soon now.

The phone rang half a dozen times on the speakers before the tone ceased and some background noise – a TV or radio, maybe – became suddenly audible, but there was a perceptible pause before a crisp female voice with an educated English accent said, "Carter residence."

Tony, watching Steve, saw him flinch, then frown. He caught Tony's eye and shook his head slightly.

And Tony, who had been flying by the seat of his pants, suddenly knew exactly how he was going to conduct this conversation. "Fury here," he growled, though he could have shouted it in a falsetto and Jarvis and the synthesiser would have made it sound like Fury at the other end.

"Yes, sir." The woman's voice had changed, now a tone or two higher, and the Englishness replaced by East Coast American. "Why are you calling this nu—?"

"Rogers contacted you yet?"

"No, sir. I would have reported in at once if he had." The woman sounded annoyed, as if he were questioning her professionalism as, he supposed, he was.

"We've lost track of him," Tony said, hoping that this was indeed the case. "He phones 'Peggy' I need to know at once. Personally."

"Yes, sir. I understand." The woman hesitated, then said, "Sir, if he suspects this charade—"

"Let me worry about that. You do your job, Agent." That last word was, he supposed, a risk, but he calculated the odds of her not being an agent of SHIELD as vanishingly small.

"Sir."

Tony made a cutting motion with one hand that he knew Jarvis would pick up and the line went dead. "Steve?" It was lucky, he thought, that Cap was sitting down right now, because he looked almost as if he was about to faint. Indeed, Bruce had risen to his feet and moved quickly to his side.

"I'm fine," Steve lied. "For a second there, I thought... but it wasn't Peggy. The accent wasn't quite perfect, and whoever it was didn't age the voice enough, even before she stopped acting."

"And she said it was a charade," Tony reminded him.

"She didn't sound very happy... about that," said Bruce.

Steve's expression was now controlled, his eyes stony. "I'm not very happy about it either," he said, his voice betraying the emotions boiling inside him.

"Jarvis," Tony said, "try to locate Margaret Carter, who was with the SSR during and after World War 2. Births, marriages, deaths, press references—"

"No!" Steve shouted, startling Tony and Bruce. He took several deep breaths, and then went on quietly, "Sorry. I shouldn't've yelled. I'm real grateful, Tony, but just let it go. Please."

"Surely you just can't let Fury manipulate you like this—?" Tony began, but Steve rounded on him angrily.

"Of course not. I told you yesterday: I'm finished with Fury, with SHIELD, but ..." The anger died away as suddenly as it had come, or perhaps he had gotten himself under control. Now he just looked weary. "But SHIELD found me, thawed me out, staked me, gave me a mission..." He shook his head. "It's difficult to let that go. Dang it, they own the apartment where I've been living, even the clothes I stand up in. Maybe they do have a right to think they own me."

Tony snorted. "Fury thinks he owns everyone. It's about time he learned otherwise and, boy, am I going to enjoy teaching him." He suddenly saw a possible yawning chasm in his plans. "Steve, tell me you didn't sign a contract with SHIELD."

Steve was frowning. "I might have done, if Loki and the invasion hadn't happened, but before then Fury and I had an ... understanding. SHIELD is the successor to the SSR—"

"But you were army, not SSR. You were never more than seconded to them, right?" 

"Well, yeah, I guess."

"And the army listed you as Missing in Action, then dead."

The right corner of Steve's lips quirked upwards. "Did they? I guess you're better informed than I am. I never asked. Guess all that 'back-pay' is a SHIELD lie too."

"Yeah, sorry about that. That's the way government institutions work, then and now. They followed fuckin' procedure even for Captain America. This time it's worked in your favour. You can move in here right now and Fury can't say a damn thing about it."

Steve was looking dubious. "That's kind of you, Tony, but—"

"You promised me that you'd help me get the Avengers back together," Tony interrupted. Then, at Steve's surprised eyebrow, "I wasn't _that_ drunk. You did say that, and just now that friends don't 'owe' friends. Fuck it, the Avengers are going to be needed again. Jarvis calculates the odds at eighty-nine point five per cent that we'll be needed within the next six months, maybe sooner, and my instinct says sooner. Fury was right in one thing; the universe knows we're here, but SHIELD has political masters and we don't. I don't need their finance to get a team ready to meet the threat."

"Privatising interstellar peace now, Tony?" Bruce asked. 

Tony's heart was somewhere down near the foyer and he didn't seem able to call it back. If Bruce and Steve left he would be alone here, waiting for an enemy even he could not fight by himself. Though he would try.

Then Bruce said, "But he's right, Steve. Look, back in the 30s, if a friend of yours or your mother's couldn't have paid the rent, wouldn't you or your Mom have offered them the couch or even a piece of floor to sleep on until they were back on their feet, however long that took? And wouldn't you have accepted that help if the circumstances were reversed? The only difference here is that Tony has money to burn – but it doesn't make any difference to the sentiment behind it or his generosity. He has invited us _into his home_."

"With no obligation," Tony said. "Not between _friends_. Or was that just politeness?"

Bruce took off his glasses and pocketed them, better to glare at Tony. "You are not helping," he told him. "Do I have to call out the Other Guy to knock some sense into both of you?" 

Steve burst out laughing. "No, that won't be necessary. Okay, let's put the Avengers back together here."

"Ha!" Relief overwhelmed Tony. Until now he hadn't realised how much he was depending on Steve joining the team. "You repaid any money SHIELD spent on you during the invasion. Cheapskates! We'll get the truck and go collect your stuff—"

"Not a truck, please, Tony. I'm not stealing SHIELD's stuff—" 

"And aren't you ... er... supposed to be at a board meeting in ..." Bruce looked at his watch. "Forty-five minutes."

"I do not need a fucking time check!"

"According to Mrs Arbogast you do," said Jarvis. "She has, by the way, added Ms Potts' resignation to the agenda unilaterally."

"Oh, wonderful."

"Was Miss Potts scheduled to attend this meeting?" Steve asked.

It was Jarvis who answered, the traitor. "Originally, yes, Captain, but she has already sent her apologies to Mrs Arbogast. Indeed, she did so some hours ago."

"Doesn't she have to serve out her notice?" Bruce asked.

It was with a kind of relief that Tony rounded on him. "Did you pay any attention when you met Pepper, Jolly Green, or were you asleep? Would you really want to make that argument to her, because let me tell you, I don't. I prefer my head on my shoulders and my balls intact."

Steve and Bruce exchanged glances. It was Bruce who said, "Maybe you ought to give her time... Let her think it over."

Tony snorted. "That's pretty much how I landed in this mess in the first place, letting her think. And how the hell did Mrs Arbogast know about Pepper anyway? No, no, they're as thick as thieves – of course Pep told her, if only to make my life more difficult." Tony ran both hands through his hair. "Damn, damn, I was never any good as CEO. I need to appoint someone, at least temporarily." His mind was skittering over names and not finding anyone suitable. Fuck it, he'd left everything to Pepper and now...

"What about the Board?" Steve asked. "Won't the members have an opinion?"

"Oh, you can bet they will..." Bruce answered.

Tony shrugged. "They'll do what I say. I own an absolute majority of voting shares."

The looks Bruce and Steve exchanged were definitely dubious. "Don't you think it would be easier if they were on your side?" Steve asked.

"What the fuck would you know about it? I thought you came from the time that even people who knew about finance were throwing themselves out of buildings? But they wouldn't have done that in Brooklyn then, would they? You ever try to bamboozle – and where the heck does that word come from? Is there such a thing as boozle that you can bam? – a company board? Full of people who never have a thought in their heads except the bottom line? And dodging their taxes?"

"No," Steve said, "but I occasionally had to deal with Generals who weren't much brighter."

"I know _exactly_ what you mean," Bruce said with feeling. "College boards are no different."

Tony straightened his spine and glared at the pair of them. "Generals! Professors! I've dealt with both and they're wimps compared to those sharks on the Board. Look, I'd love to have you around to instruct me from your vast experience, particularly if you suited up – and God, would I love to see Clayton's face if confronted by the Hulk – but Pe— Mrs Arbogast would kill me—"

"Steady. If you panic I don't think even the Other Guy can help," Bruce said with a small smile.

"I am _not_ panicking!" Tony snarled. "I can handle this."

"Of course you can," Steve said soothingly.

Tony glared at him. "Don't humour me, Rip Van Winkle." An idea occurred to him. "Anyway, I intend to close the meeting before I open it—"

"Hmm." Steve looked sceptical. "Is that really a good idea? Won't the other members of the Board need to have their say?"

"And maybe you should, you know, guard against them going behind your back..." was Bruce's contribution.

"All _right_." Tony slammed a hand down on the breakfast bar. "Jarvis!"

"Sir?"

"When you monitor the board meeting, show the feed to these two sceptics."

"Good idea, sir," Jarvis said. "I can feed their advice into your earpiece, along with my data."

Tony growled. Advice, indeed. He'd show all three of them.

 

Less than an hour later, in his most expensive bespoke grey suit, white shirt and grey tie, he was standing at the head of the table in the boardroom, his eyes roving over the immaculate men (and one woman) who made up the Stark Industries board, seeing the curiosity in their eyes, despite their bland expressions.

"The next item is the resignation of our CEO, Ms Viriginia Potts." Tony was not sure how he kept his voice steady, with every eye in the room on him, all curious and watching for weakness. "I received this in writing just before we convened – and that timing—"

"Tony needs to be careful..." Bruce's voice said in his ear.

"Timing's interesting. She left him no opportunity to accept or reject her resignation," Steve commented.

Yeah, right, maybe, "That timing sucked so much," wasn't quite right for the occasion, particularly as he didn't want to criticise Pepper – had no right to criticise Pepper.

"That timing means that I have neither accepted nor rejected it," Tony continued.

Steve's voice was soft. "If you tell them your quarrel was personal, Tony, it will get you some sympathy and buy you time."

It was infuriatingly sensible but he couldn't think of anything else to say right now. "Her resignation came about as a result of a – fuck it people, we broke up. My fault. I can't fix my personal relationship with Ms Potts but I don't see why the company should suffer because I'm an idiot with women."

There was laughter in his ear.

And laughter around the table.

He rode it. "Ms Potts was doing an excellent job as CEO, as you can see from the figures. Are we all agreed on that? Yes? Well, I want to see if the company can come to an accommodation with her. So I'm asking for time for negotiations to take place."

"Do you want us to elect someone to talk to her, Tony?" one of the non-Execs asked.

For a second he considered yelling, "No, damn it!" but, hey, that was actual sympathy. Wow.

Steve's voice said, "Take a rain check?"

Tony took a deep breath to yell, then let it out slowly. "Thank you," he heard himself say. "I may need to do that, but can we table it for the moment, until I've had a chance to consider my approach."

 

Tony slumped against the wall outside the Boardroom and let out a long breath. He was exhausted and his head was pounding again and he desperately wanted a drink – but he now had two more weeks to negotiate with Pepper or find a successor.

And one of the reasons he had those extra days was the pair of Jiminy Crickets in his ear that had made him pause before every reply – and that had given him a few moments to actually think about what he wanted to say. Towards the end of the meeting Steve and Bruce had been remarkably quiet, save for occasional murmurs of approval.

Jarvis had even contributed an, "Oh well done, sir," when Hermandez had told Clayton to, "Just shut up and let Tony handle it."

Reminded, he reached up and took the tiny communicator out of his ear. One of the first things he'd done when the Battle of Manhattan was over had been to tear apart one of the SHIELD earpieces and remake it smaller, neater and _much_ more secure.

"Will that be all, Mr Stark?"

Tony blinked at Mrs Arbogast. "Yes, fine, really, just let me have the numbers and the minutes as soon as they're ready."

He had a text message to send to Pepper, and a trip to make to Brooklyn.

 

It was a relief to take the wheel of the SUV and carry Bruce and Steve off to Steve's apartment to collect those few possessions – apart from the shield and the bike, which were already at the Tower – that he was allowing himself to call his own.

And, dammit, there was that yellow cab with that particular license plate again right in the rear view mirror.

He said, "We're being followed." Then, "Wow. We're in a spy movie."

"The cab," Steve said. "Yeah, it picked us up pretty much when we left the Tower."

"SHIELD, you think?"

Steve shook his head. "Fury drops by occasionally. I'm pretty sure they keep a watch on me, but it's not usually this overt."

"There'll be listening devices, possibly even cameras, in your apartment," Tony told him with complete certainty. "Your phone was bugged."

"Is that why you stole it?"

"Well, it wasn't because I admired the tech," Tony retorted. "I'll get you a better one. I checked the shield too, but it seems to be clean. Jarvis thinks there's a tracking device on your bike, which is one of the reasons I insisted you leave it behind. I'll deal with it personally when we get back. So, do I lose him or lead him somewhere we can grab him and Bruce can suit up and scare the truth out of him?"

"Lose him in this traffic?" Steve asked, in an appalled voice, as the SUV jerked forward right into the path of another yellow cab trying to force its way in from the right.

"I am not going to call out the Other Guy so you can play interrogator!" Bruce protested, ignoring the fact that Tony was busy exchanging rude hand signals with the cab driver.

"I'll have you know I've won races, Rogers," Tony told him, with the familiar rush of adrenaline 

"But we won't talk about the Monaco Classic Grand Prix," said Bruce.

"Hey, that was nothing to do with my driving! Vanko, remember. Force whips."

"Anyways, he probably already knows where we're going," Steve pointed out peaceably.

"If he does, there may be something worse waiting for us." Tony pulled to a halt at a red light. "Bruce, take the wheel. We may need Iron Man."

"You gonna call your armour?" Steve asked, as Bruce and Tony climbed round and over each other, and Bruce settled behind the wheel.

"Nah. Never travel without the suitcase armour nowadays," Tony said, as he opened the case and began to don the lightweight suit, feeling the weight of Steve's eyes on him.

"How much protection and firepower does this give you compared with the normal suit?"

"Well, not so much, obviously," Tony said, his voice muffled by the contortions needed to don the suit while sitting in a car, "but it should be adequate for a guy in a cab."

Steve was shaking his head. "We don't want a fight where civilians might get hurt. Or where Bruce has to call out the Hulk."

"Or where the cops can intervene," Bruce contributed. "Do I do a right here, Steve?"

"Yeah. Then second left. We'll just go on to my apartment. I'll have to let you into the parking lot. Tony can bail out there and, if the cab's still with us, take the driver into custody."

"It'll be my pleasure."

 

However, by the time they parked the SUV in the apartment building's private lot, the yellow cab had vanished.

Disappointed, Tony said, "Maybe this is a trap. I'll go up and take a look. Which is your apartment, Steve?"

"Fifth and sixth windows from the right on the fourth floor. But recon only, Tony."

Iron Man flipped him the bird and shot upwards. As he rose through the air the communicators relayed his friends' voices as they entered the lobby.

"That's odd," Steve was saying. "There's always security here."

"SHIELD?" That was Bruce.

"Possibly. They rent a number of apartments in this building."

Tony had reached the window. The blinds were open but there was no light in the room. His own lights picked out the edges of furniture, reflected off a television screen and a mirror.

"Well, then," Bruce began, "Christ!" Tony hoped desperately that exclamation didn't signal a Hulk trigger.

"Is he dead?" Steve asked.

"Apparently." Bruce's voice was bone dry, controlled.

"Tony, be careful up there!" Steve called urgently.

"Sorry, Cap, but I'm going in through your window." Tony had already activated the laser beam was cutting through the glass, close to the frame.

"No, wait for us."

"Stay down there!" Tony put his armoured palm to the glass and pushed. The pane fell into the room. The fact that it didn't shatter suggested that someone had replaced the original spec with armoured glass.

Tony flew through the window and settled lightly to the floor.

There was a brilliant flare of light, and he clamped his eyelids shut against it, throwing up his arm to protect his eyes even though he was seeing through the eye-slit sensors. The floor shook under him, the combination sending them to his knees.

When he opened his eyes, the HUD was totally dark.

"Jarvis! What happened to the display?" he demanded, praying that there would be an answer.

"All systems are fully functional, sir."

"No they aren't. HUD is dark..." Even as he spoke, Tony realised if that the problem wasn't electronic, it could be biological.

"If you cannot see the display," Jarvis said, "it would appear that I did not deploy the filters in time... Also, the room is full of some sort of gas. My analysis is not complete, but it appears to be toxic—"

"Tony! Tony, report in, dammit. Talk to us." Steve's voice was harsh in his ears.

"Steve, Bruce, leave the building _now_. Jarvis, put me on loudspeakers, volume up full." He took a deep breath, trying to hold panic at bay. "Attention! All residents, stay in your apartments. A ... powerful gas has been released on the fourth floor. Close your outer doors and use clothes or blankets to seal the cracks. Stay in your apartments, close to the windows, until help arrives."

"Dear God," Steve's voice said. "Tony, I'm coming up. The gas probably won't affect me..."

"It's designed to affect you, you idiot!" His voice echoed round the building. "Fuck it, speakers off, for God's sake. Jarvis, I need to get downstairs."

"Tony, you're hurt—"

Tony overrode Steve. "I'm fine, I'm fine. The flash temporarily blinded me –" He hoped to God it was temporary "–but Jarvis can direct me out of here."

Which strategy worked well enough smashing through the door and walking out onto the landing, but came to grief on the fire escape stairs... where he slid on his back down the final flight, and crashed feet first through the fire doors at the bottom. 

"Well, that was an interesting entrance," Bruce's voice said dryly, with the faint echo that meant Tony was hearing him naturally as well as through the radio. "Can you get up?"

"Get out of here! The gas—" Tony struggled to his feet, with outside assistance that he presumed was Bruce. And where was Steve anyway?

"Wait, wait," he said, as Bruce tugged at his arm

"This way."

"Where's Steve? He didn't... tell me he didn't go upstairs..."

"He didn't go upstairs," Bruce said, keeping a tight grip on Iron Man's arm as they shambled forward. "He dragged me outside and was about to go back in when we saw a couple of suspicious types leap into a car and take off. He— Stop. Doors. Now, forward – down steps, Tony, be careful." It was too late to stop Tony stumbling, but this time he actually managed to keep his feet, even though he could hear rain drumming on the outside of the armour. Well, he would definitely be drier than Bruce.

"Steve?" he asked.

"Took off after them. At a dead run."

"He didn't take the SUV?"

"In New York traffic? He'll have the advantage on foot, even at this hour... uhuh."

"What is it? 

"Fury. Surrounded by SHIELD hard-men. And harder women."

"If Hill's there that would be about right. Let me—"

"Banner. Stark," Fury's voice said. "We need to debrief. Wait here. Where's Rogers?"

"I don't know," Bruce said.

"Yet here you are, outside his apartment. He was at Stark Tower last night and that's a Stark registered SUV parked over there."

"Steve left the tower earlier," Bruce said. "Tony and I came here in the SUV.

Now that was plain misleading. What the hell was Bruce's game here? Not that messing with Fury's head wasn't the most fun one could have without the involvement of sex or alcohol.

"Thirteen, get your team inside—"

"No!" Tony interrupted him. "There's some sort of toxic gas on the fourth and probably everywhere by now. And a body in the lobby. Possibly one of yours."

"What about Rogers?"

"We were supposed to meet up," Bruce said. "When we got here the windows of his apartment were dark. Tony armoured up and went to take a look. He broke in and the place exploded. I take it you didn't see anything, Tony?"

"Stark?"

Well, he had certainly had his cue. "The blinds were up but I couldn't see anything much through the window. Which is why I broke in. I didn't have time to find anything before I was blinded by a super-charged firework."

"So how did you find out about the gas?" Fury demanded.

"Jarvis reported it."

"Okay, Thirteen, in you go. Deploy gas masks and oxygen," Fury ordered.

"Sir." The voice was female and there was something vaguely familiar about it. Probably someone he had met at SHIELD HQ. 

"As for you two, stay here and I'll debrief you later."

"Not a chance," Bruce said. "I'm taking Tony to hospital."

"Hey—"

"Shut up, Tony, or I'll leave you to rust in the middle of the lot."

"SHIELD EMTs are on their way," said Fury.

"They're less competent than I am, and I'm not treating eye injuries," Bruce snapped. "Good evening, Director." Bruce's hand tugged insistently at Tony's arm, and he responded to it while really, really wishing he could see Fury's face. 

However, he was still effectively blind and had to allow himself to be manoeuvred into what was presumably the passenger seat of the SUV. Even as the engine roared to life and the vehicle jerked forward, Steve's slightly breathless voice came over the communicators. "Bruce, do you have Tony?"

"Yeah. Fury's all over the crime scene but we're out of there. What about your target. Did you lose them?"

"I decided to let them go," Steve said.

 _"Why?"_ Tony demanded.

"Because I recognised them," Steve said tightly. "I'd seen them before – at SHIELD HQ."

"Did you recognise them too, Bruce?" Tony asked "Is that why you lied to Fury?"

"No. Also, I did not lie to Fury. I was just a bit... selective with the truth."

"You told him we were meeting Steve."

"We are, at Metropolitan General. In ER, by the way, Steve."

"What?" Tony yelped. "I don't do hospitals. We're going back to the Tower."

"Except I'm driving," Bruce said cheerfully.

Tony distinctly heard Steve chuckle. "See you there."

He sure hoped he could.

 

By the time they reached the hospital, Tony's vision had begun to return, in that blobs were floating over the blackness. He pointed this out – loudly – to Bruce, but it didn't stop the other man threatening to call out the Hulk – or wait for Steve – if Tony didn't take off the helmet and come with him. 

Knowing Steve would back Bruce didn't help Tony's temper.

 

"How long has this lasted?" the doctor asked.

Tony took a deep breath to ask her how he was supposed to know when he had no idea what the time was now, when Bruce said, "About half an hour."

"That is a long time for flash blindness, though it almost never causes permanent damage."

"Tell that to NATO," Bruce said.

"Can I go home now?" Tony asked plaintively.

"Can he?" That was Steve, who had arrived a short time ago and somehow managed to make his way through to this consulting room without creating a scene.

"If he rests his eyes, gets some sleep, and reports back here if his vision isn't fully restored by tomorrow morning, then I suppose so."

"Good, we'll be going then." Tony clanged to his feet, started forward and then, realising he had no idea which of the slightly darker patches against the dark grey background was actually the door, stopped dead, and demanded, "Where's my helmet?"

"In the SUV," Bruce said, close to his ear. As someone was also tugging his arm, he presumed that was Bruce too.

"You left it in the SUV! Do you know how much it cost? It could be stolen, held for ransom, melted down for scrap..."

"Then we'd better go back and make sure it's secure," Steve said, and someone was tugging his other arm, so it looked like his team mates had him trapped between them.

"Okay then."

 

They were making their way back to the SUV when something large and black – a giant crow, perhaps, because something was flapping in the wind – came swiftly out of the murk towards them.

"Damn..." Bruce said, mildly.

"I'll deal with him." It was Steve's Captain America voice. "Into the car, both of you."

"Rogers. I'm glad to see that you're in one piece." That was Nick Fury's voice, and Tony braked to a halt, putting his weight on his heels so that Bruce had to stop too, and reaching up to take off his sunglasses. Bruce slapped his hand down and they had a small, undignified struggle which Tony won.

"Not broken yet, sir," Steve said, humour lurking in his voice. "Despite your best efforts."

"You're no use to me broken, Captain." 

There was a hiss of annoyance from Bruce, but Steve just said, "How many people were broken tonight because I just happened to live in that apartment block?"

"You mean apart from Stark getting what might be expected from rushing in bull headed as usual? No one. Why was he there, by the way?"

Bruce and Tony looked at each other. Though Tony saw little more than a pale blur where Bruce's face should be, he didn't need to read his expression. He grabbed for the passenger door of the SUV as Bruce circled to the driver's side.

"I invited him," Steve said. So he wasn't giving away that they'd found the body in the lobby either.

"Well, you'll need somewhere to stay until we assign you a new apartment," Fury was saying to Steve. "Something more secure."

"That won't be necessary, sir." Steve's voice had lost all amusement – and, unless Tony was imagining it, warmth. Instead he was grave and formal and very careful with his words.

"You can't go back to the Brooklyn apartment. Even if it was habitable—"

"Thank you for the loan of the apartment, sir, but I think it's time I moved on. And right now my only concern is my injured team-mate."

"Stark's fine—"

"Dr Banner and I will decide that."

"Hey—" Tony began, only to find Bruce's hand over his mouth. He chewed at it, and received a rap on the back of the head for his pains.

"Is this mutiny, Rogers?" Fury demanded, and Tony couldn't tell if he was joking or ready to pull out restraints.

"For that, Director, we'd have to be under your command." The amusement was back, in force. "If you should happen to discover who set that booby trap, I'd appreciate you contacting Stark Tower. Now, if you'll excuse me..."

"You're going to live with Stark? I bet you twenty bucks you'll be back within a month, soldier."

"Only when you need the Avengers – and then I won't be alone. Or a soldier," Steve replied. He threw Fury a sketchy salute, and climbed into the SUV.

Bruce gunned the engine, and they were away into the night.

 

Tony lay along one of the penthouse's long leather sofas, head pillowed on a cushion, eyes closed, a glass containing the remains of a small brandy and large soda – a compromise finally agreed with Bruce – balanced on his chest and listened to his team-mates chew over the puzzling events of the day.

"Setting aside suspicion," Bruce was saying, "what do we actually know?"

"That my phone and bike were bugged, presumably by SHIELD. That we were followed from the Tower, but not all the way to my apartment."

"Because they knew where we were going," Tony contributed, without opening his eyes.

"Yeah, and SHIELD agents turned up just after the explosion – and hightailed it out again as soon as they realised I'd spotted them."

"You are sure they were SHIELD, Steve?" Bruce asked.

"I've always had a good memory for faces."

"An artist's memory," Tony observed. "Dad mentioned that."

"Which would finger SHIELD as the people who planted that booby-trap in Steve's apartment, particularly as they knew about it – knew who Steve is, where he was, could gain access—"

"Why would they want to kill me?" Steve asked plaintively.

"Not sure they did, Steve," Bruce replied. "The explosion probably would have temporarily blinded you, as it did Tony, but we don't know much about the gas."

"Jarvis says—" Tony began.

"Jarvis isn't a chemist... or a biologist," Bruce pointed out.

"To get back to the point," Steve said, "if it was SHIELD, what were they trying to do?"

"Fury virtually told you," Bruce replied. "Get you back under SHIELD's control."

"Oh, for crying out loud, that's rid—"

Steve was interrupted by the beeping of a cell phone.

"Not mine," Bruce said firmly.

"Tony stole mine," Steve said.

Tony opened his eyes, blinked the room into something approaching focus, sat up, slapped his pockets, and then asked Steve to toss him the suit jacket he had discarded on arriving back in the penthouse from the boardroom. Seconds later, he had found and extracted his cell, his fingers shaking a little as he flipped through the menus. His heart was racing with excitement, or was it dread?

It must be Pepper. It had to be Pepper.

Who he hadn't thought about for hours.

His fingers found the icons by instinct, but the text just wavered and refused to come into focus.

He handed it to Bruce with a pleading look, even as Steve said, "Close your eyes, Tony," and emphasised it with a gentle hand brushing down from his forehead. Tony shoved ineffectively at the heavily muscled arm, more to maintain his independence than because he expected – or indeed, wanted – to move it.

"It's the latest of a dozen texts from Virginia Potts – I take it that's actually Pepper," Bruce said. "Are you sure you want me to...?"

Tony's stomach clenched. "Yes, yes, yes," he said harshly. "Read them to me."

Bruce cleared his throat nervously. "They're timed about an hour apart. I think she was expecting you to reply at some point. I'll start with the oldest." There was a pause far longer than it should have taken for him to read the text. "Oh," he said at last. "Are... are you really sure about this, Tony?"

"She can't say anything worse than she's said in person."

"Well, then, here goes nothing...

_"No. Are you drunk, Tony?"_

_"Not if you were the last guy on Earth._

_"You don't need a wife, you need a mother._

_"You're already married – to Iron Man._ "

Steve had withdrawn his hand, allowing Tony to bury his face in a cushion, though he wasn't sure if he was disappointed or relieved. He certainly didn't need to see Bruce's raised eyebrow as he asked, "Do you want me to go on?"

"Married?" Steve asked, and no doubt his eyebrows were up too.

"Apparently... ah. Tony sent a text to Pepper saying... ah...'Marry me, Pep.'"

"No wonder you're still an 'eligible' bachelor, Tony."

"It seemed like a good idea at the time. No, Bruce, you can stop, unless she's changed her mind."

There was a short pause, no doubt while Bruce scrolled down the texts. "Wow, that's nasty. She's learned a lot listening to you, hasn't she? No, Tony, I don't think she's going to marry you."

Tony gathered his dignity, raised his head and shrugged as casually as he could. "Her loss."

"Bruce, how has Tony has gotten this reputation as a ladies' man?" Steve asked, and Tony could see the flash of white as he grinned, despite the dimness of the room.

"Because he used to hang out at all those places where women with silicone breasts and no brains cluster hoping to hook up with a billionaire."

"Silicon breasts?" Steve sounded disturbed.

"They feel... different," Tony observed, grinning. "Let's go get coffee and maybe send for takeout and I'll explain."

"In far too much detail," Bruce said, putting a too-helpful hand on Tony's shoulder to keep him on the couch as Steve headed for the kitchen. 

"You bet," Tony said, with his wickedest grin, but he was asleep before Steve returned.

 

When Tony had invited Bruce to stay at Stark Tower he had had an unexpressed notion of him working for Stark Industries research division, of them sharing ideas and lab space.

But Bruce was obsessed with finding a cure for his 'condition' and banishing the 'other guy' for good which meant he proved just as reclusive as Tony himself.

It was Steve who, unexpectedly, took on the role of making sure they ate and slept, who hid Tony's whisky on bad nights and who watched over Bruce's experiments while he caught a few hours sleep, because Bruce did not trust Jarvis, let alone the bots, the way Tony did.

And Tony resented that both on behalf of his creations and the calls on Steve's time; he missed him when he wasn't around, even as he made clucking noises whenever he appeared. 

Much as Tony hadn't wanted to admit it, Steve was smart and making determined efforts to come to terms with the technology of the twenty-first century. That should have been no surprise, because he'd faced the alien tech employed by Hydra, and had had to put up with Howard Stark's eccentric genius. His initial prejudices tossed aside, Tony took charge of Steve's education, with Jarvis as assistant, abandoning SHIELD's step-by-step chronological approach and challenging Steve with his own cutting edge tech and the science that underpinned it. Jarvis proved surprisingly good at translating some of this into reasonably plain English.

When it came to getting along with other people, Steve needed no instruction from him. Somehow, before Tony quite understood how it was happening, Steve, with the assistance of Bambi Arbogast, had become his emissary in negotiations with Pepper. Between them, these unlikely allies persuaded her to stay with the job of CEO, though she drove a hard bargain which included the proviso that Tony keep his distance and that her name would, indeed, be on the lease of the next ARC powered office building.

It was worth every concession to have her back as CEO, though he would have preferred to have her back in his bed. Maybe that would be possible. A man could hope.

Fuck it, he'd hated the CEO job, and Pep was welcome to it. He could be Chairman, and research engineer, and superhero (and liking two out of three wasn't that bad) and do all those jobs better than anyone.

Well, if someone else took charge of his everyday life and, between them, Steve, Jarvis, Bruce and Mrs Arbogast were managing that task well enough.

Yet, though he was exceptionally busy with the rebuilding of the tower (and, where he could help, with the rest of Manhattan), pulling apart what he had been able to salvage of the Chitauri tech, upgrading the armour, setting the research department straight at least once a day and laying the groundwork for the next but one innovation in personal communications, part of his mind continued to speculate about the attack on Steve's Brooklyn apartment. 

SHIELD had to be involved. If anyone had been serious about killing Steve, it would have been easy enough to shoot him or set a decent bomb instead of that ridiculous flash.

But why should anyone, including SHIELD, rely on such an indiscriminate and dangerous weapon as gas?

Answer: it wasn't as dangerous, at least to Steve, as advertised.

Jarvis had analysed the gas, but it was not on any database he could access, and he was not programmed for biological speculation – not Tony's speciality either.

So, despite everything, it was Bruce he turned to with Jarvis's chemical analysis of the gas that had been released in Steve's apartment block.

 

"SHIELD is still maintaining that there were no casualties," Tony said, leaning back against the lab bench.

"Well, apart from the dead guy in the lobby, that might well be the case. This stuff degrades quickly when exposed to air," Bruce told him. "On the other hand, it has a ... nasty ... effect on the autonomic nervous system." 

"A nerve gas," Steve said from the door, his voice as close to expressionless as it ever got.

Tony waved him over. "A fatal one?" he asked Bruce.

"Any normal human who gets a lungful is unlikely to survive. It probably wouldn't slow the Other Guy down."

"And Cap?"

"He's supposed to be an optimum human. I wouldn't want to make that experiment," Bruce said, with a smile for Steve. "You might survive. Or not." He frowned. "Something wrong, Steve?"

"Not compared with this," Steve made a wide gesture that took in Tony, Bruce, the computer display and the whole lab.

Tony's gaze focused on him. "Something to do with that paper you're waving around?"

Steve looked at the envelope in his hand as if he had never seen it before. His back was stiff. "This came in the mail. It's been forwarded from the Brooklyn apartment – by SHIELD, I suppose."

"What does it say?" Tony asked, with real interest, edging towards Steve in the hope of reading it over his shoulder.

Steve sidestepped him. "It's supposed to be from Peggy, from the fake address and it's typed – she – it – says her hands are arthritic. If it hadn't been for that address I might have fallen for that—"

"Steve."

"It says she saw me on TV and recognised me. That she doesn't want to see me – doesn't want me to see her the way she is now – but does want to hear from me. It asks me to call or write. That maybe I ought to contact her ... her great-niece, Sharon, who is apparently working for SHIELD. She's supposed to have given Peggy my address."

"You want me to check if this Sharon actually exists?" Tony asked.

"No! This is all a lie." Steve flung the letter on the workbench. "Read it if you want, Tony. Then get rid of it. Please." He turned on his heel and stalked out of the room.

Tony stared down at the envelope as if he expected it to explode.

"Well?" Bruce asked.

"You're just nosy. Like me." Tony reached for a pair of pliers and used them to pick up the envelope.

"Fingerprints, Tony?" Bruce asked, tossing him a pair of disposable gloves. "You do realise that apart from Steve's that envelope will be covered in unidentifiable prints."

"But the letter might not be," Tony angled the pliers better to see the front of the envelope. "Well, it's a British stamp, at least, and it's franked, though that's so smudged you can't read any of it." He turned the envelope over. "Same false return address." Putting down envelope and pliers he snapped on the gloves and extracted the letter itself.

It was high quality paper and the print quality was also excellent, probably from a laser printer.

The letter started, "My darling Steve," and Tony felt his stomach tense. Even if Steve didn't believe that Peggy had written or dictated the letter – or perhaps especially if he believed she hadn't – that must hurt.

The scrawl of a signature at the end might have been anything, including an attempt by an arthritic hand to hold a pen. The first letter did look like P, though.

"I'm going to kill Fury," Tony said.

"Stand in line."

"I'll get Jarvis to scan it and see if he can pick up any latent prints," Tony said. "And J, do we still have that worm in the helicarrier's systems?"

"Tony—" Bruce began, but was waved to silence.

"SHIELD believes they have eliminated it, but they do not appear to have located the seed code hidden within the security coding, sir," Jarvis answered.

"Tony!" Bruce said, more sharply now. "You may need that later. Steve has asked you not to do this, so why are you..."

Tony tapped his nose. "I smell a mystery."

Bruce snorted. "Comic book references? Really, Tony?"

"Hey, you got it, didn't you?"

"Maybe, but has it occurred to you could hurt Steve quite badly here? All this flim flam from SHIELD doesn't mean that this Peggy might not still be alive but senile or dying in a hospice somewhere or simply doesn't want anything to do with a man she knew seventy years ago..."

Those possibilities had simply not occurred to Tony. Surely there was no one who had ever met Steve who didn't want to see him again? He was set back on his heels, but only for a moment. "In that case we tell Steve she's confirmed dead..."

"Fury plainly thought he could fool Steve too," Bruce pointed out. "And Steve's not likely to forgive you any more than he's going to forgive him."

It was perhaps the only thing he could have said that would have given Tony pause. He said, "Steve's doin' okay."

Bruce sighed. "Tony, Steve is as brittle as you are – as I am. I'm not sure what's holding him together right now, but then I'm not sure what holding me together either..."

"Okay, okay, but I'm still checking for fingerprints."

"Then don't tell him what you find."

 

In the event, he didn't bother. There were several sets of unidentified fingerprints on the letter, but the real surprise was the envelope, which only boasted a single set, different from those on the letter itself.

 

Tony wandered round the workshop picking up pieces of equipment and putting them down again, flicking aside holographic displays, replacing them and switching them off in disgust.

All three bots had retreated to the far side of the workshop and were making no attempt to assist him, which was probably just as well as he had already consigned them verbally to the scrap yard, a step down from his more usual threats, which they tended to ignore.

It had all gone wrong since he had wandered into the kitchen this morning and found no trace of either Steve or Bruce. Unexpectedly lonely, he had sauntered down to Bruce's lab, only to be barred entry.

"Don't you have work to do, Tony?" Bruce had enquired, from the safety of his lab. "I don't need distracting right now, thank you."

Furious, Tony retreated to his own workshop, only to be totally frustrated by the SI research department, the results of the latest computer runs, and his own failure to find anything to interest him.

He flung himself into his chair and spun it several times before asking the question that was bothering him most. "Jarvis, where the hell is Steve anyway?"

"Currently, Captain Rogers is in Ms Potts's office."

Tony sat up abruptly, stomach churning with a fear he couldn't have explained. "What's he doing there?"

"Talking to Ms Potts," Jarvis said,

"Oh, very informative. Put up the audio visual feed from the CEO's office."

"Sir, you promised Ms Potts—"

"Yeah, right. That was before, this is now. Lockdown this lab. I don't want anyone in here until I've finished. That includes Steve and Bruce and Pepper and everyone else I might have been foolish enough to give overrides to."

"Lockdown achieved, sir." There was distinct disapproval in Jarvis's voice. Tough. When he had originally made Pepper CEO, he had promised he would not monitor her in her office or anywhere else, but that was before she dumped him, resigned and came back. And now she was conspiring with Steve and he wasn't sure which hurt more.

"Are you sure that is wise, sir," Jarvis asked.

Of course it wasn't wise. If Steve or Pepper found out they were going to kill him, slowly. "Jarvis, this one of the things you were built to do. So do it."

"As you wish, sir."

A 3D picture of Pepper's office materialised in front of him. Neither of the occupants was sitting at the desk. Steve was perched on the edge of the coffee table, with the Picasso Tony had given Pepper on her last birthday in his line of sight, and Pepper was in one of the two easy chairs, her feet on the coffee table next to Steve. They both looked insufferably relaxed.

"... holding up," Steve was saying. "Burying himself in his work. Drinking too much."

"In other words, being Tony. Steve, are you sure you can cope with this? I mean, losing everything you've known _and_ having to deal with Tony Stark..."

"He helped me cope," Steve said. "I've never been a solo act, Pepper. I like looking after people and Tony is... interesting."

"Tony is brilliant and fascinating and self-obsessed and terribly needy; being with him is exhilarating and very, very stressful. I couldn't stay on the rollercoaster, Steve. I still love him, in a way, but it's such a relief being out of his shadow, being free just to be _me_."

"He misses you dreadfully."

"When he has time to think about it. I couldn't take care of the company all day, and then take care of Tony. I just couldn't, Steve. I wanted someone to, just occasionally, take care of me."

"And you've found someone to do that." It wasn't a question.

"Yes. Some time ago. He isn't like Tony. Being a hero isn't a necessity for him – just taking care of me. He thinks I'm wonderful."

"So does Tony."

Pepper gave a very unladylike snort. "Tony relied on me to do the things he doesn't consider important, and he never considered what I thought about them. He doesn't _do_ empathy." Then, as Steve started to protest, "I don't mean he doesn't care, but that he can't mentally walk in your – in anyone else's – shoes. Steve, his AI had to remind him to call me when he was being heroically suicidal."

"I think," Steve said, "that that's one of the reasons Tony made Jarvis the way he is – to remind him of his humanity when his mind has soared to places the rest of us can't reach."

Tony stood frozen, almost wishing that he had found them conspiring or in sexual embrace. This was like being stripped naked, without the consequent sex.

"Where you can never catch up with him."

Steve smiled. "There are places he doesn't follow either of us."

Pepper rose to her feet. "I have to go, but... You're good for Tony, Steve. Most of all, you wouldn't abandon your ideals for him." Pepper kissed Steve on the cheek, which made him flush, then gathered up her belongings and left. 

Steve muttered something under his breath, rubbed his cheek where Pepper had kissed him, sighed, and shook his head.

"Jarvis, rewind the last thirty seconds, then play and bring up the sound," Tony ordered.

The picture paused, reversed; Steve said, "I'm not so sure."

"Switch it off," Tony snapped. "Now, damn it."

The holograph disappeared and, for once, Jarvis refrained from a smart-ass remark. Which was just as well, because right now Tony was mad enough to reprogram his protocols.

He wasn't sure why he was so angry; Pepper still cared about him, even if she had found someone new. Okay. That was fine. So long as whoever-it-was made her happy, didn't hurt her, that was fine, it was, so long as it wasn't Steve...

And it wasn't. Steve wasn't flirting with Pepper. In fact, Steve didn't flirt with anyone, didn't even flirt back at Tony, the way Bruce did very occasionally, that Rhodey sometimes did....

Tony growled to himself and stomped to the elevator.

 

Unable to stay in the same building with the people he relied on conspiring against him – though he would have been hard pushed to say what sort of conspiracy they might be hatching – he paused long enough to change into a suit and dress shirt (not a tux, which would make him stand out in the venues he had in mind) and took the private elevator down to the lobby rather than the garage. He still had to find a chauffeur he could trust now Happy had transferred his allegiance to Pepper, damn him, and knowing better than to risk one of his special babies in New York traffic when he had drunk as much as he intended – he'd once misplaced a Lamborghini for six months – he took a cab and headed downtown. 

 

Three bars and two casinos later, he was half-listening to an inferior torch singer while waiting for the pole dancing to start when, from the corner of his eye he saw a fair-haired, tall, broad-shouldered young man in a blue silk open-necked shirt leaning with his back against the bar, disco lights playing across his face. For a split second, his heart stopped ... Steve... He caught his breath and turned, taking a step towards him, an instinctive smile lighting his face...

Only it wasn't Steve, could never have been Steve. This guy was a bleached blond, shorter, with a body-builder's rather than an athlete's muscle.

He was, Tony realised, almost certainly cruising, though whether for female or male marks was open to question.

Blue-grey eyes met Tony's, their owner's expression speculative.

For half a heartbeat he considered responding, but it wasn't worth the risk. It was years since he'd felt that particular need... 

Hurriedly turning away, he busied himself watching a poker game. He'd've liked to join, but he was banned in every casino on the East Coast, plus Nevada – and probably Monte Carlo, though he hadn't checked recently – from any game where there was an advantage in counting cards. Not that he counted cards – that would have taken all the fun out of it – but they might have given him the benefit of the doubt.

Only one of the players was distressingly familiar. He had plainly drunk too much tonight. He was seeing Avengers everywhere...

The man threw in his hand and rose. His eyes met Tony's and it was either Clint Barton or his double. He inclined his head in a "follow me" gesture, and Tony trailed casually after him, through the emergency exit, up the fire escape and onto the roof.

"We must stop meeting like this, Clint," he said. "People will begin to talk."

"If they can get a word in edgewise," Clint retorted.

"So, what can I do for you, William Tell?"

"More a case of what I can do for you, though if some people find out you may have to shield me from non-avenging furies."

"Are they listening?"

"Why do you think we're meeting like this?"

"Clint, do you really need to come in? If so, there's a place prepared for you. I've told you that. Steve's told you that."

"Nah, just keep what I tell you under your armour, Stark. I'm going out on a limb here. Nat still thinks SHIELD has Cap's best interests at heart."

Tony snorted.

Clint chuckled. "Yeah, well, you're prejudiced. And Nat's got some kinky suspicions about you and Steve."

"Romanoff can keep her suspicions to herself."

"You have to understand how much SHIELD has invested in Cap. They spent millions finding him—"

"So did my Dad," Tony snapped back.

"They kinda inherited the search. Only when they found him they listened to the shrinks, an' they messed up. It appeared Cap wasn't as good at taking orders as they thought he'd be—"

"His war record should have told them that."

"Yeah, well, loss and shock, y'know, can be exploited. Give a man in that position something familiar an' he'll hang onto it for dear life." There was something in his voice that suggested he might be speaking from personal experience. "So Fury let him think he was still in the Army, with back pay, held out links to the past, gave him an apartment in Brooklyn, a bit of fatherly advice, a lot of rope..."

"And had him bugged and followed," Tony pointed out, his mind boggling at the idea of Fury giving anyone fatherly advice. "Now tell me something we don't know."

"Well, yeah, this is SHIELD, buddy. After the Avengers split, Fury thought Cap would drop right back into his place with us but that wasn't happening. So he planned to tug on the leash to bring Cap back into the fold, convince him he'd be safer with SHIELD."

Swallowing a comment about mixed metaphors, Tony said, "So they set that booby trap in his apartment."

The silence stretched. "How the hell did you know that?"

"I didn't, until you just confirmed it. But we'd discussed the possibility. We just didn't want to believe they'd risk Steve's life with that gas—"

"They didn't. They'd tested it on him, back in the day, when they were looking for something that would sedate him. That stuff knocks him out. Doesn't hang around, either. Breaks down real quick when exposed to air."

Fuck it, he really should have loosed that worm in SHIELD's computers. "Yeah," Tony said, "Bruce mentioned that in his analysis. What about the body in the lobby?"

Clint snickered. "You sound like an Agatha Christie novel. What body? There's no record of a body."

"Steve and Bruce saw it. Bruce examined it."

"Oh. LMD, maybe?"

Fuck again. Bruce had no experience with Life Model Decoys and Steve had probably never seen one, or known he was seeing one if he had. But what on Earth had it been there for—oh. "Someone panicked."

"Probably. I was on leave then so all I got is gossip and speculation. But Cap being with you and Bruce would panic anyone."

No way could killing Tony Stark or causing Bruce to Hulk out have been hushed up. With no time to dismantle the booby trap, the agents on the ground would've used the LMD as an attempt at distraction without revealing their presence.

When he pointed this out to Clint, the response was bitter: "You really don't like us, do you, Stark?"

"I like you fine, Clint. It's Fury and SHIELD I don't trust."

"That's what I'm saying. SHIELD dragged me from the gutter. I owe them big time, both for that and letting Tasha live. But you know something? Cap didn't think twice before trusting me, despite what I'd done. Despite what Fury'd done. I hope it never happens, but if it comes to a choice between SHIELD and the Avengers, I'm going with what he chooses. I think Nat will too. So this is a word of warning: Fury isn't done yet and he always has an ace in his sleeve. Ciao."

Tony waited five minutes after Clint had gone before he climbed down the fire escape and made his way back inside.

As he wove his way through the throng, he caught another tantalising glimpse of the blond man now dancing with a too-skinny thirty something with haunted eyes. Tony's eyes lingered on the man's neat ass, shown to perfection by too tight – no _perfectly_ tight – pants.

But compared with some asses he knew, it wasn't even close to perfection, and his dick had better just go back to sleep because if it couldn't have that perfection it wasn't settling for less...

Several drinks at the bar made things a good deal clearer.

Why the fuck had he been sulking in Avengers' Tower, mourning his relationship with Pepper, becoming more and more frustrated until he was getting hard at the sight of a tight ass or big tits?

He didn't even have to make an effort – there were already half a dozen women hanging with him right now, letting him buy them drinks and trying to get his attention. All he had to decide was which one – or maybe two – to take home with him.

 

"Oh, for God's sake!" Tony threw the nearest object – a quarter-inch flat head screwdriver – at U, who had been scurrying about the workshop, trying to tidy away various pieces of armour that Tony had laid out carefully for rearticulation and then been distracted by a SI research report on the power cells of the Chitauri fliers. "I do not need your help. I do not need any robotic help _right now_. Goddamn, what was I thinking about when I told Bruce I could trust you? Keep your pincers to yourselves! Christ, I'd be better off with Twiki! Jarvis!"

"Yes, sir?" Jarvis had bored and British down pat.

"Is it safe to go back upstairs, yet?"

"If you mean have the ladies you brought home last night become bored and left then, no, sir. They are still in the penthouse. Captain Rogers has made them breakfast and—"

"He's made _what_?"

"Eggs Benedict, I believe, sir."

"Smartass." Tony wasn't sure if he meant the computer or Steve. "Tell him hands off."

"I don't believe Captain Rogers has any intention—"

"Just tell him," Tony growled. "Jarvis, am I losing my touch?"

"Not being a human female, I find that hard to judge, sir. Should I ask Ms Potts?"

"Oh, shut up, Jarvis."

"As you say, sir."

 

It was less than five minutes later that Steve walked into the workshop, folded his arms, and gave Tony his best 'Captain America' glare. "Pepper told me it used to be her job to 'throw out the garbage'." His face twisted in distaste at the phrase. "But there's no one here now who'll do that for you, Tony."

Tony yawned elaborately. "They'll get bored and go eventually, particularly if they aren't fed. So stop feeding them, Steven."

"I think you are working from insufficient information, sir," Jarvis put in. "The brunette – 'call me Lucky' was it? – is currently attempting to download data from one of the penthouse terminals..."

" _What?_ "

Steve was grinning. "It appears that you got picked up by a spy. Or a reporter. Or possibly both, judging by the way the pair of them were using the cameras on their smartphones. They were quite blatant about it. I suppose they thought I was too out of touch to know—"

His voice was cut off by the closing elevator doors.

 

Tony was still smarting as he watched another tanker draw up beside the Gulfstream V – the only SI aircraft currently available – with a barely controlled urge to get his own hands on the rig. They would be faster through the safety checks if he did them himself, and if this mob didn't get a move on he was going to miss the meeting and Pepper was going to kill him...

She was probably going to kill him anyway when she heard about this morning's debacle. 

He should have realised that Jarvis would have blocked the signal used by the women's cell phones as soon as he saw them being used as cameras, but Steve might have told him that he'd quietly purloined said cells while the women were at breakfast and deleted all the incriminating photographs.

Which meant that he had seen them.

Tony rarely felt embarrassed by anything, but the thought that Steve had seen anything of his mediocre performance the night before still made him squirm.

What really hurt, though, was that, though plainly disapproving, Steve seemed amused. And, worse, what he disapproved of was Tony's treatment of the women and what he found funny was his floundering attempts to eject them.

And he hadn't had time to sulk properly in the workshop before Mrs Arbogast had called with the news the SI jet Pepper had been using had developed an engine fault and had had to return to O'Hare before it was twenty minutes into its flight to a meeting with EU finance ministers in a castle somewhere in the Bavarian alps.

The fault in the jet engines still hadn't been isolated.

By the time Pepper lost patience, there was no flight available direct to Munich for another 19 hours and a more roundabout route would take her almost as long. Even the flights to New York were fully booked.

In what Tony suspected was desperation, she called his PA to ask him to take a company jet out to Munich and hold the fort for her.

In a way, he'd been grateful for the distraction, though he wasn't looking forward to reading the mass of files downloaded onto his StarkPad. He'd've already been immersed in them, except for the trouble refuelling the jet.

The StarkIndustries hanger and private terminal at JFK airport had been there since Tony's grandfather had moved it from LaGuardia in the late 30s and Tony suspected it had never been updated; in fact, he was sure some of the mechanics had been there since then, in that they still referred to 'Idlewild'.

If he hadn't been so annoyed, he could've asked Steve to come with him. Though did Steve have a passport? They certainly hadn't asked him for one at Stuttgart, but then Tony hadn't exactly had his with him, either. Well, he could have asked him to come to see him off. At least then he would have had someone to talk to...

The noise of engines startled not just him, but the entire team. 

Through the open hanger doors, he saw a Citation Mustang in unfamiliar livery taxiing towards them. It stopped outside the open doors, the steps were deployed, and a tall strawberry blonde descended them at speed, despite five-inch heels. She was instantly and confusingly recognisable.

Tony was still staring at Pepper and trying to make sense of her presence when she stopped in her tracks. "Tony! What are you doing here?"

"What am I doing here? I had a message to say you were stuck at O'Hare and needed me to be somewhere in the Black Forest.

"I texted Bambi to cancel that when Jack agreed to give me a lift," she explained, waving a hand at the bemused-looking craggy-faced man who had followed her out.

"My pleasure, ma'am," Jack said, with the air of it being the one thing he was sure about.

"Jackson's company makes air conditioning equipment," Pepper announced serenely. "Jack, this is the infamous Tony Stark."

Not offering his hand would have been ungracious, and Pepper would have kicked him. He did so and she didn't. "Pleased to meet you."

"An honour, sir," Jackson said, pumping Tony's hand enthusiastically.

Pepper was staring at the Gulfstream. "If Bambi didn't pass my message on why are you still here? You should be—"

"Five hundred miles or so out in the Atlantic. Yes, I know. Unfortunately, this is the second attempt to fuel this aircraft. I was seriously considering going home and getting in the suit."

Pepper ignored that in favour of turning a gimlet stare on the Gulfstream's pilot, who had approached quickly on sighting Pepper. His response was to pause a good ten feet away, looking as if another step would take him into quicksand.

"When will you be ready to go?" she demanded.

"We'd be ready in ten, but I can't contact either the JFK tower or New York Centre by radio – the interference is _wild_. Mac got through on the landline, but it seems there are intermittent power outages and none of the generators are working properly." 

Pepper said something very unladylike, but all Tony felt was relief.

"It may be worsen that," a new voice interrupted. It came from a middle-aged woman in a simple uniform of black pants and blue shirt, but with a pilot's wings sewn onto the latter. The captain of Jackson's plane, presumably. "I didn't like the look of the weather comin' in. The last time I saw a cloud formation like that was out in tornado alley."

As one, Pepper, Tony, Jackson and the two pilots hurried back through the hanger doors.

It was one of the oddest skies that Tony had ever seen. To the south and west the descending sun was bright in an almost cloudless sky and the skyscrapers of Manhattan glittered to the north west, while to the east the sky was dark with tumbled cloud. The north east sky was blocked by a huge thick-edged saucer of white cloud, with a massive wedge of black towering above it, the atmosphere below it veiled in precipitation. Sparks of lightning crackled along the base of the cloud and flashed across the hollow at its centre.

There wasn't so much thunder in the air as a deep mutter, almost into infrasound levels, so you felt it in your teeth and the soles of your feet and your very bones.

Tony said, "I think you'd better get that aircraft of yours into this hanger. Not that that'll do any of us much good if that really is a tornado-spawning mini-supercell up there."

"That's real neighbourly of you, Mr Stark. Guess we'll do just that." Jackson's pilot hurried to her aircraft.

"Would you say that was over Long Island Sound?" one of the pilots asked.

"Or the eastern end of Queens and the west of Nassau County," Tony replied. "Either way, it's going to be expensive, both in lives and property damage. I'd offer you beds at Stark tower – we've plenty of room now most of the repairs are completed – but you might well be safer—" He paused as he was interrupted by an urgent, mounting screech, then pulled out his Avengers communicator and slipped the earpiece in.

"Stark responding," he said.

"Rogers here," it was Steve's Captain America voice, and that boded no good at all. "There're some things you need to know.

Instinctively, Tony reached for a more personal tone. "What's going on, Steve?"

"I'm on the Tower helipad waiting for a SHIELD chopper. I've had a message from Fury. Apparently there's some sort of incident over in Queens. He's lost touch with Hawkeye and the Widow."

"Is this something to do with that odd cloud? And why hasn't he called me? Or Bruce?"

"I don't know. From here that cloud looks more in Nassau County than to Queens, maybe. Bruce left a couple of hours ago. Said he was going over to Culver University, wherever that is."

"Ah." Bruce's lady, Betty Ross, worked at Culver. "Don't you find it suspicious that suddenly you're the only Avenger available and then Fury calls _you_? Not me. Not Bruce."

"Yes, I find it suspicious. But I can't refuse, even if it wasn't Clint and Natasha in danger."

"Okay. I'm calling the armour now. Keep in touch and activate your tracker, Cap."

"Your meeting—"

"No longer an issue." Tony turned to Pepper. "The Porsche is in the lot." He tossed the key to her. "Take care of it."

Pepper leaned forward and kissed his cheek. "I'll take care of the car if you take care of yourself. Deal?"

"Deal." 

 

The armour took five minutes to arrive and by that time Tony was cursing Jarvis, Steve and Fury in equal proportions. Once it closed around him, however, and he was in the sky, he ordered Jarvis to locate Steve on the assumption that SHIELD was taking him to where Natasha and Clint had been lost. 

He flew North over a city plunged into darkness, grey clouds swirling above, car headlights the only sign of electricity below. Over on Manhattan Island, Tony could see the faint glow of Stark Tower, but even that seemed dimmed.

Honing in on Steve's signal brought him under the edges of the supercell – if that was what it was – and he gasped in shock. Below him, buildings had been reduced to rubble, while ahead, dark funnels of wind danced through the suburbs, sweeping up everything in their path.

The noise was like a continuous landslide.

"Jarvis, where's Captain America now?"

"On the ground, three hundred and fifteen yards at eighty-six degrees relative."

"Roger that."

Tony dropped quickly towards the ground, looking for the bright blue of Steve's uniform suit, and there it was, in the midst of a group of darker-clad SHIELD agents.

"Who the hell are you?" Steve was demanding, in a voice which was so unlike him that Tony kept silence as he dropped from the sky to land behind him.

Steve was confronting a blonde woman in SHIELD uniform who looked vaguely familiar. Her expression was an odd mix of discomfort and annoyance. "Right now I'm the person you're reporting to, Captain," she replied, her tone even enough.

But Tony recognised that voice. He had heard it time and time again as he played over the recording of 'his' conversation on Peggy Carter's supposed phone number, and now Jarvis threw a photograph of Peggy Carter up on the HUD.

Apart from colouring, the two women were almost identical.

Fucking hell, this was what Clint meant, Fury's ace-in-the-hole, the bait he had always intended to dangle in front of Captain America. This woman was meant to be a connection to the past. Steve's only connection. How could he resist it?

"No you're not, and I'm not," Steve said to the woman-who-wasn't-Peggy. Tony had never expected him to speak so coldly to someone he had never met before, but that voice held all the ice of his seventy years of frozen imprisonment. "Did you always look like that?"

"What?" The woman looked scandalised, and almost ... hurt. "How dare—"

"You can tell Fury I'm wise to his little tricks." Steve obviously felt he had plumbed the depths of Fury's duplicity and Tony hoped he was right. He suspected that this had been the woman who had been instructed to impersonate Peggy on the phone – and then turn up in person, pretending to be some sort of relative – this Sharon person, presumably. Only Steve hadn't called her. Was that why Fury had called Steve, and only Steve here, so he could form a connection with her? Only it seemed it hadn't worked, Tony thought smugly, as, ignoring the woman, Captain America turned to Iron Man.

"Have you and Jarvis located Barton and Romanoff?"

"No. There's nothing at the coordinates you gave me."

"Better have eyes on. Give me a ride?"

"Sure thing." Tony slid an arm around Steve's waist; they'd practiced this. "Three strikes, honey," he said to the woman and lifted off.

 

The sky was a huge swirl of bruised cloud, lit by flickering sky lightning. Waves of hail rattled on the armour and bounced off Steve's head and shoulders. He was taking a battering but made no complaint, focusing instead on scanning the battlefield.

And it was a battlefield; an apocalypse painted in scorched black and highlighted in heaped white hail.

There were human shapes too, blackened bodies lying on scorched rubble.

Lightning strikes? But lightning didn't normally aim for people.

Even through the filters on the armour, Tony could smell the burned flesh. What it was like for Steve he could not imagine.

And Natasha and Clint were somewhere in the midst of this.

"What do we know?" Tony asked.

"Fury didn't give me much detail. There was an intelligence report of a terrorist arms cache—"

"And he sent Hawkeye and the Widow?" There had to be something more to this. "I can't believe this weather is coincidental. What's SHIELD doing about it?"

"Assisting first responders. There's no intelligence, and they say this Ten Rings group isn't— hey!"

Tony had almost dropped his passenger in shock, his breath caught in his throat, the ARC reactor heavy in his chest.

Steve tightened his grip. "Tony? You've heard of them?"

"Yeah," he said. "I've been in their hands, but those were thugs in a cave, not sophisticated, not scientists, so maybe this weather is natural..."

And he and Steve should be helping with the rescue but, fuck it, Iron Man and Captain America would be no more use... less use... than the first responders and SHIELD agents. "We can't let them have Natasha and Clint."

"We won't."

 

Both men expected to be shot at as they descended through battering hail and wind at the co-ordinates where contact with Hawkeye and the Black Widow had been lost, but Jarvis still could not locate any body heat, any sign of life.

Nor was that surprising. The building that had stood at those coordinates was now a heap of rubble.

"Jarvis, radar and sonar scans below," Tony ordered.

Steve was shaking his head. "If they were under this when it came down..." 

The HUD was showing the overlaid radar and sonar scans and Tony's heart suddenly lifted. "Uhuh. Stand back, Cap." Iron Man's repulsors blasted at the rubble. Seconds later, in the light coming from the chest plate, they could see a narrow metal stairway leading down into the earth.

"What d'you suppose is waiting for us down there?" Steve asked wryly.

"Apart from Barton and Romanoff? Orcs? Cave trolls? A balrog?"

"Are those even real?" Steve asked suspiciously.

Tony chuckled. "Ask Weta's animators. Ready for the Mines of Moria?"

"Sir, there is a potential charge building..."

"Get down!" Tony shouted at Steve, lunging forward, boot and hand repulsors blazing, in an attempt to snatch his teammate into the air, but Steve had already dived behind a wall of rubble. 

With a dreadful crack, a bolt of lightning hit exactly where they had been standing, throwing dirt and rock and concrete high into the air, and adding the reek of ozone to the smell of burnt bodies.

"Jarvis, locate the source," Tony ordered. Then, to Steve, "Where's Thor when you need him?"

"Asgard," Steve said, deadpan. "Got Heimdall's number?"

"On speed dial. But it goes straight to voicemail."

"Sir," Jarvis reported. "That wasn't lightning. It came from the top of the Tendring and Sons Telecommunications Tower, which is three hundred and nineteen yards east of us—"

"When did that spring up? The zoning— Wait. Tendring. Oh, fuck it, how obvious can you get and Fury not spot it?"

"I do not have the answer to that question, sir, but all the electricity in this part of the city is being channelled there."

All the electricity? "What? Wait. I thought we had a power failure here!"

"No, sir. The generators and the grid are still fully functional."

"Jarvis, physics doesn't work like that. If nothing else, every single fuse and transformer should have blown and if they didn't then the wiring would burn out."

"I know that, sir," Jarvis said snappily, "but the fact remains that that is what is happening."

"Jarvis has the source pinpointed – a comms tower just over the county line," Tony told Steve. "Looks like it's Ten Rings behind everything, including the weather and power loss."

"Okay, Iron Man, go get them. I'll handle below," Steve ordered as he pulled a tiny but powerful flashlight from one of the pouches of his utility belt.

Tony hesitated. Ten Rings. He'd been in their hands. Yinsen had been killed by them. They might already have Natasha and Clint. Steve... "There could be anything down those stairs."

"I've been in worse places," Steve said, with a shrug. "Conditions below won't restrict me the way they will the armour. And I've seen you take on Thor. Go."

Tony bit back further argument. They were in battle, which meant Steve called the shots. Also, he happened to be right. But he had never found that fact so difficult to accept. Somehow, he restricted himself to, "Take care, Cap," and lifted off into the skies.

 

One thing about this unseasonable weather; it made observing Tendring/Ten Rings Tower from the low cloud comparatively easy, and the noise of the wind and hail covered the sound of the repulsors.

The top of the tower was a flat platform, surrounded by antennae. On that platform, a group of men, all looking excessively silly in what appeared to be yellow pyjamas, were clustered around some odd-looking machines.

"Jarvis, analysis."

"Unable to comply, sir. The tech is unknown. Possibly alien."

Oh, wonderful.

There was another oddity; those pyjamas ought to be flapping in a high wind. In fact, everyone on the tower, and possibly the tower itself, should have been swept away by now, even if they had not been struck by one of the tornadoettes.

Instead, everything was still. There was no wind, no rain, no hail...

One man, though, wasn't clad in the ubiquitous pyjamas but what appeared to be a green and yellow spandex suit that had been attacked by shears, and he was haloed in crackling light, his hands resting on a thick cable.

"Jarvis, do we have anything on Sparky?"

"Checking NCIC database. Possible identification as petty criminal Maxwell Dillon. Dillon was apparently involved in an accident and gained some minor ability to store electricity in his body."

Tony grinned to himself. The Iron Man had been hit by Thor's lightning. This style-challenged idiot couldn't have the same impact.

It was a pity he couldn't just release a missile and blow the tower to bits, but he wanted that tech – control of the weather, Christ, the lives he could save with that tech – so he would have to clean out the rats' nest by picking off the humans.

They were members of the Ten Rings – they deserved no less.

It was what SHIELD would do.

But the Avengers were better than SHIELD, weren't they? Thor had offered Loki a chance to surrender. More than one chance. And they hadn't killed Loki, when he had accepted his defeat.

Though he wasn't sure that, "I'll have that drink now," was actually meant as a statement of surrender.

Steve would probably want him to give even terrorists that chance.

Being stealthy in red and gold battle armour with brightly glowing eyes and a blazing light in his chest plate wasn't exactly easy, but now the sun had dipped below the cloud layer it began to look possible. He circled back to come in from the west, where he would be no more than a black dot on the face of the sun.

From here he could see the pattern of the tornados, half a dozen equally spaced, spiralling outwards from the tower. He'd have to time it correctly to pass between them...

"Ready all weapons systems, Jarvis."

"Ready, sir. You have ninety seven point seven per cent power available."

"Good enough." The Iron Man surged forward, shrugging off the effects of the gusting winds – Force 10, as Jarvis cheerfully informed him – and the battering hail.

He descended on the Tendring Tower like the wrath of God, guns rattling, with the loudspeaker booming out his message, "Step away from your machines and lay down your weapons."

Everyone ignored him.

Tony grinned wolfishly. Well, he'd given them a chance. 

As he came into land, he turned the guns and the lasers towards the pyjama-clad technicians.

And the even more eccentrically clad figure of Maxwell Dillon (if it was Maxwell Dillon) blinked out of existence just as the shells should have struck him, then blinked back in again, sparks flashing across the knuckles of his hands.

There was no flash, no impact of a lightning strike, but in that instant, the readings on the HUD and Tony's view of the world blinked out.

A breath later, and the armour impacted on the tower roof in Tony's normal knee down landing position, jarring every bone in his body. It ground forward a foot, a yard, then groaned to a halt.

It wasn't the same as when he'd been blinded.

No camera view, no readings from the HUD, yes, the same, but this time there was no Jarvis in his ear, no hissing of servos, no sound but muffled voices and far-away thunder. The armour, immovable, held him fast in its grasp. Weapons systems, repulsors; nothing answered his command.

He couldn't breathe. The pain in his chest drove every rational thought from his mind.

There was a deliberate tap on his helmet. Then someone shoved at him. Though he tried desperately to keep his balance, to force the weight of the suit to hold him upright, he failed. There was an instant of unbelief, then the world upended itself and he crashed sideways to the ground.

Someone spoke close enough to his helmet and loudly enough for him to hear. "They didn't tell me to expect Iron Man but I expect they'll pay me a bonus, particularly when I bring them the armour—"

The voice was drowned as thunder boomed. Something hit the armour hard, lifting the Iron Man from the roof and sending him somersaulting wildly. His arm hit something—

But the pain in his chest was easing, the HUD was flickering to life, Jarvis was calling him...

He was tumbling through the air, the taste of bile in his mouth and his senses dazed by dizziness and fading pain. Somehow, he stretched out his arms and attempted to activate the repulsors, but they didn't answer, were still powering up...

An arm caught him around the waist, steadying and lifting him through the air. A deep voice asked, "Man of Iron, you are well?"

Tony turned and lifted his head. Behind his faceplate he was grinning widely at the worried face beside his. "Thor! I was just thinking of you, buddy. Is Heimdall telepathic?"

"He sees all things, including this strange weather. The Rainbow Bridge is recently repaired, and I needed but my father's permission to come to your aid. When I heard the villain boasting he had slain you, I feared that had taken too long."

"You hit me with lightning."

"Aye. I remembered its effect on you," Thor was swinging his hammer above his head with his right hand as he held Tony with his left. Now that swing accelerated, the arm rotating at a totally inhuman speed, and from the hammer came a wind that lashed outwards, untangling the clouds, with Thor and Tony in the stillness of the storm's eye. "Should we deal with our enemies?"

"Weapons systems back on line," Jarvis told Tony.

"Let's go get 'em, Thor. Only this time I think we're better off with a long range attack."

Thor grinned, and loosed the hammer and Tony in a single motion. Steadying himself on his repulsors, Tony sent a missile following Mjolnir.

The hammer reached the tower first, smashing through the steel and concrete. The missile followed in its path but, unlike Mjolnir, it never reached the other side.

It was a very satisfying explosion.

The building was shaking, folding in on itself, the machines toppling, their operators sliding across the roof. 

The green and yellow clad man – vanished. One moment he was there, the next he had gone and this time he did not blink back into existence.

Equally suddenly, the shadowy shape of buildings in the murk flickered with light. From below, something exploded, sending earth and concrete and steel seething upwards, and the Tendring Tower slid down to meet it, as Thor seized Tony's wrist and propelled them up and up, out flying the fountain of debris.

But below them the ground was dark for several hundred yards, apart from the lights of SHIELD vehicles, blurred by falling dust.

"Steve..." Tony whispered.

_I'll handle below..._

Steve, Steve, Steve...

"Iron Man?"

"Just get us down there." Maybe Steve was still alive. He _had_ to be alive. Had to have found Natasha and Clint. Had to find some way to protect them...

_I didn't even apologise..._

 

Steve was sitting on a hunk of concrete amid chaos, as SHIELD agents, EMTs, firemen, representatives of half a dozen police forces and the odd stubborn citizen milled and yelled about him. He was taking no notice of them, his shield between his spread knees, his cowled head bowed.

The blonde SHIELD agent who looked so like Peggy Carter was standing at his shoulder, talking to him in a low voice. As he and Thor descended lightly to the ground behind them, Tony began to catch what she was saying.

"... not your fault..."

Steve's reply was almost inaudible, but Tony got the impression his temper was fraying.

"... not what you think..."

Steve's head came up. "I think hundreds of people are dead," he growled. "God knows how many blocks in Queens and Nassau County have been flattened and all because you sent Barton and Romanoff in prematurely to the wrong target—"

"I swear we didn't know. We weren't even sure that there really was a terrorist arms dump, but Barton and Romanoff insisted on going in because of Stark's connection to the Ten Rings—"

"If you knew the Ten Rings were involved you should have called me in," Tony stated coldly. "But you didn't want me, did you? Or Bruce?"

"Tony...?" It was a whisper, as Steve's head turned. "Tony!" Then he was on his feet, relief and ... joy? ... in his voice and his expression. He stumbled as he started forward, hands closing on the Iron Man's arms, making the metal creak.

And Tony both loved and hated the armour at that moment; loved it because with the faceplate closed Steve could not see the expression on his face and hated it because he had to fight not to raise it, to kiss Steve. That would be disastrous.

And Steve was leaning on him, as if using the armour's strength to keep them both upright. "You're alive," he said, as if he hadn't quite believed the evidence of his eyes. "Oh, thank _God_..."

"There's a different god you have to thank," Tony said, nodding towards Thor.

Steve's chin went up. "Thor, welcome back – and thank you."

"Your survival pleases me greatly. The fair Natasha and the Hawk-eyed one?"

"Natasha and Clint?" Steve nodded towards the ambulance. "Minor injuries. I found them trying to disarm a bomb while holding off a series of attacks. We got out just in time."

"What about you?" Tony shoved back Steve's cowl, making him wince. His fair hair was matted with blood. "Damn it, _Steve_..."

"I'm fine. We need to get out there. There are still tornados running wild..."

"The winds will answer to me," Thor said. "Iron Man, you will care for the Captain?"

"Damn right I will. Wait, Thor, when you've finished come to the tower. Stark tower."

Thor's big smile lit his face. "Where else should I go?"

"I have a proposition for—" But Thor had already gone.

 

With Thor's arrival, the situation in the Tower changed rapidly. He felt none of Steve or Bruce's qualms about accepting Tony's hospitality – indeed, taking it for granted – so he not only moved in but brought his astrophysicist lover, Dr Jane Foster, with him, and Jane came as a unit with Dr Erik Selvig and their ridiculous intern, Darcy Lewis. So that meant that Tony had to find lab space for Jane and Erik. Encouraged by the way the women lightened the mood in the Tower, Bruce gathered his courage and asked his equally brilliant lover, Dr Betty Ross, to stay for the weekend – a weekend that became a week, then two, at which point Betty resigned from Culver and accepted Tony's offer of funding for her research. More lab space to find, but it also meant that Tony was suddenly surrounded by brilliant scientists who spoke his language and shared his dedication.

Almost overnight, Avengers Tower, as he was trying to persuade everyone to call it, had become a centre of cutting edge research. How had that happened?

It pleased the Board, though, and Pepper, with whom he was slowly rebuilding his old friendship.

Occasionally, watching Thor with Jane or Bruce with Betty, he felt a pang of regret for his relationship with Pepper but he watched with disapproval as Darcy flirted with a seemingly oblivious Steve. Sure, she was pretty and funny and intelligent and, if you discounted the seventy years Steve had spent frozen in the ice, only a little younger than he was, but...

There was no point at which their lives really touched, no shared experiences or points of reference.

He hoped.

And Steve, Tony knew, was still burning that torch for a woman who might or might not still be alive, whose living, breathing double he had encountered on the battlefield.

Steve needed closure. If Bruce wouldn't let Tony trawl the internet or set loose the worm in SHIELD's computers, there might be another way to achieve it.

 

Tony leaned his elbows on the table, avoiding the empty coffee mugs, his chin on his hands, and eyed Clint and Natasha over the top of his sunglasses. He wasn't going to be subtle. They didn't appreciate subtle. "You owe me and Steve a real big favour."

They exchanged identical glances that might mean anything or perhaps they were just electing a spokesperson. If so, Natasha got the unanimous vote.

"What do you want, Tony?"

"SHIELD took advantage of Steve and tried to hold onto him by feeding him misinformation. I resent that, by the way, on principle. No-one – least of all Steve – should be lied to just because they're useful because, you know, they become less useful that way."

"Get to the point, Stark."

"I am. SHIELD – you – were cruel enough to lie to him about Margaret Carter, led him to believe that she was just a phone call away. But whoever wrote those fake files – and they lied to him about me, too, but I'll let that go – was either unbelievably careless or thought Steve was stupid; the address was an obvious fake."

Again the exchange of glances. "No, he was neither," Clint said. "Phil Coulson put those files together – under protest, because he didn't agree with the psychologists."

"Shrinks." Tony couldn't keep the disgust out of his voice. Pepper had kept trying to get him to see an analyst, but he wasn't about to waste his time with someone nowhere near as intelligent as he was. "Hadn't that still-in-the-forties shtick taught them anything? Anyhow, you lost Steve with that ploy. But I want to know Peggy Carter's true status; deceased, insane, senile, brain dead, taken over by aliens, whatever. And evidence that I can believe and, more importantly, that Steve can trust."

"Anything else?" Natasha asked, with a raised eyebrow. "Fury's phone number? Everyone's security passwords? The helicarrier overrides?"

Tony resisted smirking. It took a real effort, but he managed it. "Oh, and when you tell Fury about this, you can also tell him to keep the blonde who looks and sounds like Peggy Carter away from Steve."

"Why?" Natasha asked. "She's Margaret Carter's great-niece, one of SHIELD's most effective agents and—"

"And _hot_ ," Clint added.

"I would have thought Steve would want to talk to Sharon, that she's the ideal person to tell him about Margaret—"

"I'm sure that's what Fury intended," Tony said coldly. "Nice cosy chats. Tie Steve even closer to SHIELD. Didn't work like that. And if Coulson made the fakes obvious, he was the one who spoiled the plot." He liked the thought of that. Steve would like it too, when he told him.

 

The equations, white against the dim room, hovered in the air in front of him. There were parts of Selvig's analysis of the Tesseract that were tantalisingly familiar, while others were awkward or mind-bogglingly strange. Selvig thought that the Tesseract had a kind of sentience, or at least purpose, but Tony wasn't so sure.

It was Jarvis, who knew better, who interrupted his train of thought.

"Sir, Ms Romanoff has just entered the building."

Tony ignored him, concentrating on the familiar part of Selvig's Tesseract analysis. If you factored in influence of Dark Matter—

"Sir, she is on her way to the penthouse and she is accompanied by SHIELD agent Sharon Carter."

Tony swore and brushed the equations hanging in the air aside. "Fuck it, Jarvis! I don't want that woman here."

"Ms Romanoff has full access to the Tower, sir, on your orders."

"I know, I know. I meant the Carter woman."

"I am aware of that sir, but I repeat, Ms Romanoff has full access."

"Where's Steve?"

"Waiting for them in the Penthouse."

"Shit!" Tony leaped into the elevator.

 

When he charged into the Penthouse he found Steve standing with Bruce at his back, confronting Carter and Natasha.

In the full light of the huge penthouse windows, Carter was stunningly beautiful in black slacks and white shirt, her blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, her skin flawless. The resemblance to Peggy Carter's World War II photographs was striking, particularly as her jaw was set as hard as Steve's own.

Bruce looked quickly at Tony, then disappeared in the direction of the elevator.

Tony caught his breath, and sauntered towards the bar. "Did you always look like that?" he asked Carter, repeating Steve's question from that first meeting under the super cell, with the hail clattering about them. He poured himself a large Scotch and waited for the answer.

"What d'you mean by that, Stark?" Carter demanded, but it was Jarvis who answered.

"Sir, I scanned the young lady as she entered the building. Firstly, she is fully human and not a Life Model Decoy. She is wearing no more than minimal make up and she shows no micro scarring from surgery."

"You'll be telling me next she's a natural blonde," Tony muttered.

"As you say, sir."

Carter was smiling to herself, plainly feeling that Jarvis had scored her some points. Ignoring Tony, she turned to Steve: "Captain, this conversation might be easier without Mr Stark's intervention."

"For you, perhaps," Steve replied. "We may need umpires. In which case, you have Natasha and I have Tony. Fair?"

"Why should you think we need umpires?" Carter asked.

"Why should you think you're welcome here?" Steve retorted.

"Tony asked me to produce evidence of what had happened to Peggy Carter," Natasha said. "He also asked me to keep Sharon – who is Peggy's great-niece and your only link to her – away from you, Cap. I have my own suspicions about his motives, which probably aren't in your best interests."

Steve glanced at Tony, a smile on his lips, before answering. "You're wrong, Natasha. Tony was there both times I met Agent Carter; he needs no other motive."

"That's what I don't understand," Carter said. "Why are you so angry with me—?"

"I'm not. I'm angry with SHIELD in general and Fury in particular. I don't like being lied to, and I don't like being manipulated. You've been Fury's tool in both. I have no reason to trust you."

"Then trust me," said Natasha. "It's not Sharon's fault, Steve. The psychiatrists said that you were on the edge of a breakdown, that you needed something to anchor you to the present, a link to the past. There wasn't anyone. Except Sharon."

"Don't be so sure of that," Steve said, and his glance flickered to Tony as he spoke, his lips quirking in a small smile.

The tension inside Tony eased a little. "So you were going to pretend you were Peggy?" he said to Carter. 

"Yes, she was," Steve said, before Carter could reply. "She answered the phone call in an imitation of Peggy's voice."

"How could you know that?" Carter asked. "You didn't... Oh, wait. Damn, I know I should have checked with Fury when he came through on that number. He didn't, did he? But the call came from his cell. How—?" Her eyes went to Tony. "You."

Tony grinned. "You'll never know for sure," he said. Then, to Steve, "I'm certain 'Peggy' would have suggested you contact her great-niece. How far were you willing to go, Carter?"

Carter took a step towards him, but was stopped by Natasha's grip on her arm. "Don't judge people by your own moral standards, Stark."

"SHIELD agents have moral standards? Well, Coulson did, of course, but he's dead, isn't he? Fury certainly isn't above using sex—"

"Tony," Steve said, in gentle rebuke. "I'm sorry, Agent Carter, but, as you can see, I didn't need your help. That's been clear for a while. So what was I supposed to do? Fall for you because you look exactly like Peggy?"

"It's—"

"Which is," Steve went on, "an... unlikely... coincidence."

"Isn't it?" Tony was almost giddy was triumph. "I don't buy this great-niece thing either, Carter. It doesn't explain why you look exactly like Peggy. Only blonde."

"An accident of genetics," Natasha said.

"A very convenient accident," Tony retorted.

Carter hesitated, biting her lip. "I know it's weird, but there's a ... story ... in my family. That my father was not, actually, my grandfather's son. I did ask Aunt Peggy – we've always been close – but she wouldn't say anything. Just seemed sad."

"Are you saying he was Peggy's son?" Tony asked.

"It's ... possible."

"I don't think so," Steve said, but there was a touch of uncertainty in his voice. "When was he born?"

Carter looked straight at him, with eyes, that Tony suddenly noticed, were within a couple of shades of Steve's own blue. "25th May 1943, according to his birth certificate."

"What exactly, are you implying?" Tony demanded, but he knew, he knew, and the taste of it was bitter. Carter was claiming that she might be an even better link to Steve's past than being Peggy's great-niece and virtual double. Peggy's granddaughter – and Steve's? She looked like Peggy, but the colouring...

How could Steve resist this?

But suddenly it wasn't Steve standing there, arms folded on his chest; it was Captain America, with a half smile on his lips, and determination on his face. "Give Director Fury my compliments on his ingenuity, and on your loyalty," he said. 

Carter stared at him for a long moment. "You don't believe what I'm saying, do you? Not one damn word."

"Not your fault. You're good, and in some ways you're like her, but you've never spoken with Peggy Carter."

Carter looked... almost relieved. "Not for a long time," she admitted. "She died when I was very young."

"Now that last, I believe," Steve said. "You wouldn't have tried that line if she'd been alive to allow you and Fury to check your facts."

"Which are?" That was Natasha.

"I'm pretty sure the Peggy I knew wouldn't have risked her career by sleeping with anyone, particularly without protection, but what I am certain of is that she didn't sleep with me."

"You didn't have sex with her." Tony hoped he didn't sound as relieved and triumphant as he felt. He was just grateful that Steve didn't know much about recent advances in genetic engineering which might have left doubt in his mind.

"No."

"I _am_ Peggy Carter's great-niece." Carter sounded almost forlorn.

Steve shrugged. "In that case, I guess you can tell me where she's buried."

 

The cemetery was quiet and peaceful under the autumnal sun, though the wind was cold.

Margaret Carter's headstone was simple; it showed her name, her birth and death dates, and the simple inscription: "She fought the good fight."

She had died eighteen years ago. 

Tony put a hand on Steve's shoulder, squeezed it briefly, and then retreated to a bench in the sunlight, watching surreptitiously. 

It seemed like a long time before Steve knelt and placed the posy of tiny blue flowers below the headstone. He remained kneeling, head bowed, for another minute or so, then rose and looked about him wildly.

Tony raised a hand, waggling his fingers, and Steve hurried towards him, stumbling as he reached the pathway, and dropping onto the seat beside him, so their shoulders brushed.

Steve was trembling. You couldn't see it, and the hands clasped in his lap were still, but Tony could feel the shake against his arm.

Neither of them said anything. Steve was breathing harshly, his face turned away from Tony, whose heart was thundering in panic behind the ARC reactor.

Fuck it, he didn't know what to say to comfort Steve, didn't know how to cope with Steve's grief or his own jealousy.

Jealous of a dead woman? An old dead woman. Who had never slept with Steve. Which he hadn't either and probably never would.

Whatever he said was going to be wrong. It always was. But he hated silence, and this particular silence was unbearable.

"What did those blue flowers signify?" he asked. "I take it they do signify something."

For a moment he thought Steve wasn't going to answer, then he said, "They're forget-me-nots."

But not red roses. Tony knew that red roses signified love, passion. Red rosebuds would have looked great with the blue things, but Steve had chosen not to include them.

He hated himself that that gave him hope.

"I thought it wouldn't matter, seeing Peggy's grave," Steve said suddenly. "But they're all dead, Tony. I _knew_ they were all dead. This shouldn't hurt so much." His voice faded on a sob.

Unable to bear that desolate voice, Tony slid an arm round him, and, instantly, Steve turned in towards him, burying his face in Tony's shoulder.

Tony came close to panicking, but by then his arms had closed around Steve and Steve was clinging to him and he was almost overwhelmed by waves of tenderness and desire.

"Hush, hush. Steve, don't cry, _please_ don't cry." Because if you cry I'm going to say or do something that'll send you running in panic and I can't...

"They're all dead, Tony. They're all dead."

"I know, I know. If I could," Tony lied, "I'd invent a time machine, to get you back where you belong." Or maybe, if it was possible, he'd actually do it, because that would stop Steve hurting. He wouldn't be here with his arms around him, but Steve wouldn't be crying.

Steve shuddered in a strange half-laugh. "Thank God you can't. I'd be so tempted to save Bucky, to save all my friends, but I couldn't do that, it would change things. You might ... might ... not even ... exist."

"Would that matter?"

Steve pulled back to look at Tony. His face was flushed and tear-stained and he should have looked dreadful – perhaps he did, on some non-Steve scale – but Tony wanted to fuck him there and then.

"I'm not going to feed your vanity, Tony," he said, a smile touching his lips. Then, he went on, "But I couldn't live with that, here or in the past. That world needs you, not just Iron Man. You. And I ... no. It's just that they... Peggy, Bucky, Phillips, your father... they knew _me_ , knew me _before_ but liked or respected me anyway."

"For what it's worth, I didn't think much of Captain America when I first met him but Steve Rogers converted me."

And Steve laughed, though perhaps there was a note of hysteria at the very back of it. "Oh, Tony, you..." He put both hands on Tony's shoulders, apparently to hold them apart. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

Tony made himself grin at him. "Be less irritated?"

"Be dead, I think." He took a deep breath, and Tony felt the hands on his shoulders tense. "Tony," Steve said, very carefully. "I don't ... want to spend tonight alone."

Did he mean...? Even if he didn't, Tony could do this, could be there for him, whether or not there was sex involved. Though he hoped like hell there was. He said, "You won't. Promise."

Steve's arms relaxed and he slid forward, resting his forehead against Tony's, and they remained there for several minutes, in the warmth of the sunlight, with the promise of no lies between them, only possibilities.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I am aware that no film maker uses an address that might be real. However, it would be nice if it _sounded_ real. This was meant to be a little fixit for an irritating address. It got out of hand...


End file.
